This week’s 5 most important social media changes

What’s changed in the last seven days? What does it mean?

Facebook launched a new petition feature, LinkedIn announced interest targeting for ads and you can now share your favourite Netflix shows to your Instagram Stories.

Let’s take a look at these changes in more detail.

Facebook removes the ability to automatically add Group members

If you are a group admin, you may have noticed a drop in members in recent weeks. Up until now, users could be automatically added to groups by their friends, they’d receive a notification that they’d been added, then content from the group would enter their newsfeeds. This means that many users were part of groups but had never visited or interacted with them. Facebook is now moving those members to an invited section which will not count towards the group member total.

You can now share your Netflix favourites to Instagram Stories

Stories are showing no signs of slowing down in 2019. They continue to grow in popularity which makes it a useful marketing tool for brands. Netflix is capitalising on this by allowing users to share the latest TV show or movie they’re watching straight to their Instagram Stories. Other users will then be able to open the show/movie in Netflix directly from the Instagram Story.

Facebook has launched a new petition feature

Getting mixed up with politics hasn’t helped Facebook in the past but that hasn’t stopped them from launching a new petition feature called Community Actions which will help users call for action and notify government officials. The feature was launched in the US this week after being tested in a few markets. There’s no indication yet of when the feature will be rolled out globally.

LinkedIn announces Interest Targeting in Campaign Manager

LinkedIn is looking to up their advertising game and has a series of new features that will hopefully help them do that. The first of which is interest-based targeting. Interest Targeting will allow advertisers to “fine tune their campaign targeting by using more than 200 professional interest categories.” These categories are based on the individual’s professional interests and the topics that they are engaging with across the platform.

Facebook adds new Page tab call ‘Page Quality’

Stamping out platform misuse has been a long term goal for Facebook. They’ve announced a couple new measures which they hope will help make page managers more aware of potential rule violations and limit those who do continue to break the Facebook Community Standards. For now, the Page Quality tab will display any content that has been removed due to Community Standards violations but Facebook noted that they will be providing more information in the tab over time.

This week’s 5 most important social media changes

What’s changed in the last seven days? What does it mean?

Big changes (that could affect organic reach) are being tested and rolled out across Facebook, Pinterest is rolling out max width videos to all advertisers and Snapchat daily active users are on the decline.

Let’s take a look at these changes in more detail.

Facebook announces new updates for pages

A whole range of new updates for Facebook pages has been announced this week which are aimed at “making it easier for local businesses to maximise their exposure on the platform.” The updates include an updated recommendations page, changes to the product and services listing and expanding the job listing feature to all regions.

Pinterest rolls out max width video ads to all business’

After a few months of testing, Pinterest has announced that it will now expand its attention-grabbing ‘max-width’ videos to all advertisers around the world. Max videos are 4x bigger than the standard grid tile and Pinterest stated that they’ve seen “an increase in engagement rates for this format” compared to usual advertising.

Facebook tests replacing the ‘Share’ button with a ‘Message’ button on posts

Organic reach is being hit left, right and centre these days. A new test spotted by Matt Navarra shows that Facebook is considering replacing the ‘Share’ button on Newsfeed posts with a ‘Message’ button. Sharing is currently a key factor in maintaining and increasing organic reach so this change could see organic reach drop even lower.

Snapchat loses 3 million daily active users in Q2

Just 17 months after going public, the company is reporting that their daily active users have declined from 191 million to 188 million. Those are still pretty big numbers but it’s nothing compared to Instagram’s 400 million daily active users less than two years after the feature launched. Is this the beginning of the end for the app?

Facebook is shutting down Friend List feeds

The Friends List feature allowed users to scroll through posts that only came from users in a certain group – family, school, work etc. Starting today, Facebook is removing that feature from the platform. Users will still be able to create and update these lists but they’ll have to work a little harder to keep up to date with what’s happening.

This week’s 5 most important social media changes

What’s changed in the last seven days? What does it mean?

Snapchat lets you mute content, Messenger launches a new hub to help marketers and developers, Instagram expands advertiser image options, and is Facebook going to launch a dislike button?

Let’s take a look at these changes in more detail.

More image options for advertisers on Instagram

Beginning with a limited number of businesses, Instagram will now allow advertisers up to three pieces of media (image / film) in each Stories ad. Previously it was limited to one. The expansion will allow businesses to give more context to ads with more scope to tell stories and drive engagement with products and services.

Read the announcement from Instagram here and stay tuned as the feature rolls out globally.

Mute users on SnapChat

It launched with little noise – but you can now mute notifications from groups or users on Snapchat. It’s aptly named ‘Do Not Disturb’ so you can zone out from the unwanted noise and focus on the content you really want. Australia is one of three markets where the featuer has taken effect.

New Messenger website

Businesses and developers can now delve deeper into Messenger with the launch of an updated site for the platform. It’ll act as a central depository for all the Messenger information you’ll need to support your activities, including (among others) best practice and solutions guides, newsroom and educational content for developers.

Snapchat merchandise

Downvote on Facebook

Dislike a comment? Facebook’s testing a dislike (thumbs down) feature for you to share your disapproval. The test doesn’t mean that this function will be rolled out globally, but if it does it’ll give brands a whole lot more insights into the reactions and sentiment of what they’re publishing and how they’re engaging. Watch this space.

End of year means the inevitable flood of ‘top’, ‘most’ and ‘best’ lists, along with the obligatory predictions for what’s to come next year.

Here at Kamber we’ve been keeping our eyes on the best of the best in technology, content and culture from Australia and around the world. Here’s what’s caught our attention – all conveniently curated in one place for your enjoyment.

Happy Holidays – bring on 2018!

Google’s most searched 2017
The top trends data reveals that we’re mostly asking Google ‘how’, seeking to make sense of the world around us. Sport was the single most searched topic in Australia.

The most shared Facebook content
The team at BuzzSumo supply a nice wrap up with insights broken down by sector. Not everyone can break the internet like some of the content featured, but there’s important and valuable lessons for content marketers in here nonetheless.

Facebook Australia’s most discussed topics
When planning and developing content it’s always great to know what’s resonating and what people are looking for. Facebook Australia’s most discussed list for Australia in 2017 is a great insight into just that.

Twitter Australia’s most discussed topics
Not to be outdone by Facebook, Twitter Australia also released its most discussed topics list… and there’s some differences in there. Not to spoil it for you, but politics and marriage equality topped the list.

Apple’s apps of the year
Chosen by App Store editors, this list crosses a heap of themes (from photography to mindfulness) and will definitely pique your curiosity. Give some of them a try over the festive season break!

100 Best Android Apps of the Year
Not an Apple user? We’ve got you covered – this top 100 from Digital Trends covers everything from productivity to news and sports.

Car of the Year
Never heard of a Skoda Kodiaq? You have now – and news.com.au’s team of reviewers think it’s pretty darn good.

Albums of the Year
The team at BBC’s 6 Music has spoken – this is what your ears should feast on over the festive season. Enjoy!

TIME Person of the Year
Yes it’s already been reported far and wide, but we love it. Here’s to all the silence breakers.

LinkedIn Career Advice

The professional social network is rolling out LinkedIn Career Advice – its formal mentoring offer which links mentors and mentees with one another. For brands and businesses it’s another opportunity to link your best and brightest with talent out there in the marketplace.

Facebook’s Creator app

Video broadcasters on Facebook now have a suite of new effects (including intros and outros) available to them thanks to the platform’s Creator app. It’s another big push by Facebook into video as it battles YouTube for views.

Learn more about Facebook’s Creator app and its features for broadcasters here.

Facebook Trust Indicator

Facebook has started rolling out Trust Indicator to publishers, a feature that will allows users to access more information about the publication / content they’re reading, including ownership, fact-checking policy and ethics policy. It’s Facebook’s latest effort to tackle the fake news issue and will roll-out more broadly to publishers in coming months.

Instagram Stories on your browser

To date most Instagram activity has been enabled through the app on your mobile device. With this latest change, the platform allows you to create Stories and save posts you like direct from your mobile browser on Instagram.com. That said, Instagram is yet to enable posting from desktop, but this new feature may have taken us one step closer.

Messenger increases image resolution

With its latest update, Facebook Messenger now allows image sharing at 4K resoltion – while maintaining the speed of sending and receiving images through chats on the platform. Good news for the 17 billion images that Facebook claims are shared on the platform each month!